Chapter 44
When Christmas Day dawned, it brought a tentative kind of sunlight that filtered gently through the trees.
Siri was standing next to Gerd out in Esmared, almost thirty kilometers from Skavboke, observing the wreck from a distance. She hadn’t gotten much sleep.
The resigned paramedics and firefighters took notes, filled out forms, and performed a few last routine measures. Slender tendrils of smoke were still rising from what had once been an old Saab.
“Merry Christmas, or whatever, although I hadn’t expected to see you again so soon.” Gerd stomped in place on the asphalt to keep her feet warm. “You were right. Yesterday. About the blood sample.”
“I just felt like I needed to speak up. Hope you understand.”
Gerd nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
And it’s a little late now, Siri thought.
Gerd made a face. “What a terrible smell.”
“Is it him, do you think?” Siri could hear how weak her voice was.
“The smell?”
“In the car. Do you think it’s him?”
“I hope not.”
—
Many rumors circulated, in the following days, about Killian’s death.
That he’d been drunk or that he’d had some sort of breakdown; that the accident outside of Esmared, right where Halland became Sm?land, was caused by some problem with the car.
Or that fate had simply caught up with him at last, and that was that.
The darkest theory said it wasn’t an accident at all, really, because someone had drained the brake fluid earlier that evening and turned Linda Persson’s old Saab into a death trap.
Frans Ljunggren had noticed suspicious stains on the gravel road outside Linda’s house the next morning, perhaps from a leak.
Whatever the case, Killian had been spotted on the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
He was behind the wheel of his mother’s Saab, speeding out of Skavboke.
It was obviously Killian: he was recognizable by his blond hair and the scab like a thick, black swipe of marker over his nose.
He seemed to be heading south, according to Isidor Enoksson, who had just finished talking to his sister on the phone and had gone out to throw away the trash from the Christmas smorgasbord.
It was a few minutes before twelve thirty when he saw the car, which had taken a left after passing through ?rnilt and headed down the old road toward R?mebo and Breared, and on toward Siml?ngsdalen.
Half an hour later, someone called the emergency number to report a car fire out in Esmared.
The technical investigation determined that Killian must have been driving at high speeds.
He had likely gone into a skid on the ice and tried to brake, and, when that didn’t work, pulled the hand brake to correct.
But that only made it worse. The car overturned, flipped onto its roof, and slid across the road and into the rock wall near the shoulder.
The gas tank burst and in an instant the car was engulfed in flames.
Traces of the accident would still be visible years later, dark spots on the scorched asphalt.
It burned for quite some time before anyone happened by. Killian, or what was left of him, was still behind the wheel. The damage to the car had been so severe he couldn’t escape.
As Siri stood out in Esmared, observing the remains of the car and its driver, she thought: We didn’t do this, did we? Or was it us? Did he take off because of us?